Government Fraud: Pensions

I warned people about this over a year ago….. 

This morning I had seen a third "notice" that there are widespread "critical shortfalls" in Union Pension Funds.

I put up a short video on the topic and am now getting emails telling me that this is more widespread than has been reported – additional funds have been sending these deficiency notices out.

And in that article I called for general strikes organized by the unions of this nation – what’s left of them anyway.

In fact, here’s the original call:

Yes, I am potentially calling for the Longshoremen to strike every port in the United States.

I am potentially calling for the Teamsters to strike.

I am potentially calling for every State Employee covered by CALPERS to strike.

Of course none of them did.

Now we get this from The Wall Street Journal:

Public employee pension plans are plagued by overgenerous benefits, chronic underfunding, and now trillion dollar stock-market losses. Based on their preferred accounting methods — which discount future liabilities based on high but uncertain returns projected for investments — these plans are underfunded nationally by around $310 billion.

The numbers are worse using market valuation methods (the methods private-sector plans must use), which discount benefit liabilities at lower interest rates to reflect the chance that the expected returns won’t be realized. Using that method, University of Chicago economists Robert Novy-Marx and Joshua Rauh calculate that, even prior to the market collapse, public pensions were actually short by nearly $2 trillion.

Oh, so there’s a little book-cooking going on?

Yeah, you’ve got these "public" pension plans that don’t like the rules that private pension plans have to use for their accounting, and this is what they’re telling their "auditors":

Some public pension administrators have a strategy, though: Keep taxpayers unsuspecting. The Montana Public Employees’ Retirement Board and the Montana Teachers’ Retirement System declare in a recent solicitation for actuarial services that "If the Primary Actuary or the Actuarial Firm supports [market valuation] for public pension plans, their proposal may be disqualified from further consideration."

Is that kinda like "intentionally understate the shortfall or you’re fired"?

Looks like it to me.

Let’s be clear (again), just so nobody can claim they weren’t warned:

These plans are critically underfunded – all of them.  Many of them shifted to an equity-heavy focus in 2007 just as the market topped, and some (including CALPERS) were even dumb enough to get involved in the speculative real estate bubble in 2005!  If your supposed pension is provided by these funds you have a problem and you better pay attention now, because these sorts of actuarial problems, once they get going, cannot be reversed as they take years to show up, by which time its too late to fix it.

The alleged "requirement" to make up shortfalls from the governments involved sounds all fine and well, but how do you squeeze blood from a stone?  WHEN, not if, the tax base disappears (unemployed and broke people don’t pay taxes!) your pension plan can "demand" tax hikes but if the money doesn’t exist then that’s just too darn bad.

The American Sheeple are lining up to be sheared again.  I was warning about this over a year ago in regards to pension plans both public and private over a year ago, along with the clear and impending train wreck in state budgets.

Will the people wake up before or after "change" is all that is left in your wallet?